Polar station in Tikhaya Bay to become a museum

A hangar in Tikhaya Bay on Franz Josef Land will be renovated within four years to become an Arctic history museum, Pavel Filin from the Russian Military History Society told TASS.

"We will restore the hangar for airplanes in Tikhaya Bay on Hooker Island, Franz Josef Land, and turn it into a museum with changing exhibitions, where we will give tea to tourists and tell them about the history of Arctic development," Filin said. The museum will feature a model of the U-2 airplane, many of which were stationed on the island in the 1930s.

There will be changing exhibitions, but some rare and valuable exhibits will not be on public view because of the harsh Arctic weather. Filin told the TASS news agency that the hangar museum would be a convenient venue for telling tourists about the history of Soviet polar aviation and the Franz Josef Land archipelago.

Viktor Boyarsky, chairman of the Polar Commission of the Russian Geographical Society (RGS), told TASS that the restoration of the polar station in Tikhaya Bay would be their first project of this kind. "There are museums in the Arctic, and we have experience in reopening polar stations, but it will be the first time we will restore the facilities of a polar station," he said.